


Spandrels

by Butterfly_Beat



Category: Leverage
Genre: Collection: Purimgifts Day 3, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-25
Updated: 2013-02-25
Packaged: 2017-12-03 13:48:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/698929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Butterfly_Beat/pseuds/Butterfly_Beat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even now, years later, they float in her mind like the remnants that they are.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Spandrels

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jessalae](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jessalae/gifts).



> After a lot of back and forth, I decided to go with a third fandom for this one, rather than a repeat.
> 
> You would have gotten Buffy, but I started thinking about what I could remember of Faith's canon and realized that there's dark and then there's _Faith Lehane_ and suddenly my hit-or-miss Leverage canon seemed a much safer choice. I apologize if Sophie is a touch off, here - I haven't seen an episode of Leverage since the Blue Line Job, and hadn't realized that the series was over until I saw your Dear Author note! I now have a renewed interest in digging back through the series.
> 
> I hope you enjoy this, even if it isn't Parker-centric :)

Sophie has a conflicted relationship with the concept of identity. This has been true ever since the first time she learned that she could lie with a steady heart and make her troubles go away, and even a new life on the straight and (mostly) narrow can’t cure her of it. After so long slipping in and out of such a broad spectrum of perspectives, she’s not entirely sure that she wants to, now that the opportunity exists. It's not as if she never had chances to walk away, before, she just never had a reason to want to.

She knew who she was as a child, the subtle cues that come from family and others close enough to imprint on a young soul working their magic upon her sense of self and me. That girl is still buried somewhere, but Sophie had been uncharacteristically honest when she told Tara that there were days she forgot which little girl belonged to her own past as opposed to one of her covers. Which set of eyes had gazed soulfully out of the vanity mirror as her mother braided her hair.

In her line of work (yes, Nate, former line of work), a name is as often the equivalent of a ballgown donned for the evening as it is a true second skin. She might preach otherwise, but only the deep cons have ever warranted a room in her palace of memory after a job was done. She’s been Sophie, Jenny, Katherine…

The list of who she was trails on into the foggy realm of history, a spandrel between herself and the life she’s built for herself in the here and now. Every once in a while, she still finds herself humming a pop tune that Katherine had liked due to an American Boy-Band Phase in her rebellious youth, or perhaps stirring her tea a precise three times the way a proper member of the extended royal family was trained to do. When she catches herself, it always takes a moment to sort out who contributed the mannerism and whether her current self should continue it.

Nate would say that she only needs to be herself, but it will never be that simple. After decades of life, Jenny is just as much a part of who she is now as Sophie will ever be. To cast her out without a second thought just seems wasteful. After all, it was Jenny who knew her way around a kitchen, even as Katherine knew her way around a keyboard. She might want to make a soufflé, eventually.

  
Image Credit: [OpenWalls](http://www.openwalls.com).

  
Image Credit: [Desktop Nexus](http://www.desktopnexus.com)


End file.
